Big cats no longer welcome in Marin

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 5, 1997

1997-03-05 04:00:00 PDT MARIN COUNTY -- SAN RAFAEL - Who could have guessed it was legal to keep lions and tigers as pets in Marin?

But no longer. Marin County supervisors adopted an emergency ordinance banning all big cats in residential areas after a 70-pound Bengal tiger in Kentfield scared one too many neighbors.

"There are far more appropriate areas to house this type of wild animal," said Supervisor Hal Brown, who proposed the measure that was approved Tuesday. "These are really very reasonable neighbors."

"These cats are not inherently dangerous. They sleep in our beds," said Kelly Pasquan, who had the 7-month-old tiger as a guest at her Crown Road home and urged the supervisors not to adopt the ordinance. "They are not man-hunters. They would not go after man if they escaped."

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"I was running with my dog on Saturday," said Alexander Hehmeyer. "The tiger ran toward me from the lot. It was rather startling, to say the least."

He said the tiger was tied within 20 feet of a jogging path used by hundreds of people.

Another neighbor, Dixie Brown, said, "Keeping an exotic animal in one's neighborhood is not a private act."

She said that when people heard about the animal, "we had a number of cars drive by asking where's the tiger house?"

The tiger, named Nanda, was staying at her house for six or seven days while the handler was here on a photo shoot with the cat, Pasquan said after the hearing.

Nanda is part of a collection of abused or neglected animals that have been rescued by the nonprofit group Alamo Tiger Ranch in Alamosa, Colo. They're taken on visits to schools, churches or other places to educate people about endangered species, Pasquan said.

Nanda also stayed at Pasquan's house last July along with a baby African lion and baby mountain lion.

She said the cats are hand-fed from birth, raised with dogs and pose no danger.

Pasquan said she trusts the big cat with her two young children, 3 and 4 years old, and insisted the neighborhood was never at any risk because Nanda was tethered to a strong chain behind an 8-foot-high fence.